


Under Wandering Stars

by Vagrant_Blvrd



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, The Mandalorian (TV)
Genre: M/M, Pre-Relationship
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-03-09
Updated: 2021-03-09
Packaged: 2021-03-16 05:02:07
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,986
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29944881
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Vagrant_Blvrd/pseuds/Vagrant_Blvrd
Summary: Bo-Katan won’t take the Darksaber no matter what Din says or tries.
Relationships: Din Djarin/Luke Skywalker, Minor or Background Relationship(s)
Comments: 14
Kudos: 177





	Under Wandering Stars

**Author's Note:**

> Loosely based on a couple not!fics of mine and such. ¯\\_(ツ)_/¯

Bo-Katan won’t take the Darksaber no matter what Din says or tries.

She looks down her nose at him when he tries to hand it back once the Jedi and Grogu have left the Imperial cruiser. Sniffs disdainfully when he pleads for her to take it from him because he is no ruler.

Sneers when he threatens to hurl it into space and let it end up wherever it will, subject to powers greater than either of them.

“No,” she says, steel in her voice, fire in her eyes. “You’ll take the Darksaber and learn to wield it properly. Then we’ll see who is fit to rule Mandalore.”

There’s a weight to her words that rings through the shuttle bay, high and clear like pure beskar.

And still, Din looks at the vast expanse of space through the through the magnetic field in the shuttle bay, and thinks, _what if_.

Bo-Katan sighs, and for a moment Din swears he sees sympathy, an exhaustion to match his, in her eyes before she lifts her chin high and turns towards the lift that will take her to the cruiser’s bridge.

She doesn’t look back.

========

Cara finds him standing in the shuttle bay some time later. She’s dragging Gideon’s unconscious body behind her like so much refuse.

There’s a tired smile on her lips, gaze dropping to the Darksaber gripped tightly in his hand.

“Bo-Katan’s letting me have one of these beauties,” she says, jerking her chin to an Imperial shuttle parked nearby. “You need a lift anywhere?”

Din opens his mouth to answer, and stops as he realizes he doesn’t know where he can go.

His ship is gone, destroyed on Tython. Grogu is with the Jedi. His covert – 

Those who survived Nevarro, the Empire’s wrath, are scattered.

(The weight of the Darksaber threatens to send him to his knees with the promise it holds, _if only_.)

“You can come with me,” Fennec says, stepping out from behind Cara. There’s a tired smile on her face, understanding like kindness in her eyes. “Fett set up a rendezvous point for us in case he didn’t make it back here within a reasonable time.”

He could be dead, Din knows. Ship taken down by the TIES that pursued him away from the cruiser.

Fennec knows that as well as Din does, but she has an agreement, an understanding with Boba Fett that while Din can understand from an outsiders perspective, he hasn’t lived it like she does.

What he knows is this:

If Boba Fett is dead, truly dead, nothing can change that.

If Boba Fett is alive, he’ll meet Fennec at the rendezvous place they agreed on because he said he would, and she trusts his word.

A simple enough thing, really.

“Alright,” Din agrees.

Surprise flickers across her face before Fennec gives him a nod and then goes to examine the shuttle Cara indicated.

“Huh,” Cara says, but when Din looks at her, she’s smiling. “Sure you’re going to be okay with her? Them?”

It’s a valid question, really.

Din doesn’t know Boba Fett the way others seem to. The reputation he built for himself before the death that left him a changed man. Who wanted his armor back, but showed Din proof it was his when he could have taken it and left Din stranded on Tython with Grogu in Gideon’s hands.

He knows _that_ Boba Fett. 

The one who found Fennec in the sands of Tatooine and gave her the second chance few would think to offer. 

The one who has kept her loyalty long after she could have disappeared if she really wanted to.

The one who kept his word in helping Din rescue Grogu, Fennec at his side.

“Yeah,” Din says after a long moment. “I think I will.”

Cara stares at him, brow furrowed, and then she laughs. “Alright, but don’t come crawling back to me if they strand you somewhere.”

She slaps his back, hard, and laughs when it makes him stumble under the force of it, but her hand stays on his back until he gets his feet under him again.

========

Cara takes them to a planet that’s somehow worse than Tatooine. 

“Watch your back, Mando,” she says, eyes taking in the bustling crowd of the spaceport. “Guy like you looks real shiny to these people.”

Fennec smirks, tossing a pack at Din who catches it before it hits the muddy ground at his feet. She slings a larger pack over her shoulder and strides down the shuttle’s ramp, pausing to toss a mocking salute to Cara before she reaches the ground.

“She’s right, you know,” Fennec says, giving Din a once-over, eyes lingering on the signet on his pauldron. “You look pretty tempting in that armor.”

She smiles, and Din can’t tell if it’s amusement or anticipation.

People look at Mandalorians and view them as a threat or a target. Some see them as both.

(Hunter and prey.)

Full beskar just means people take more notice of him now. See his armor and calculate its value, think they’re the ones who could put it best to use. Don’t stop to think how he might have earned it, how he keeps it, as though they’re the first to think to take it for their own.

“I think they’ll find I’m not an easy target,” Din says, and sighs when she laughs at him. 

“Oh, I don’t doubt that,” she says, and pushes past Din to head down one of a dozen identical narrow alleys leading away from the spaceport.

========

They find Boba Fett in a hole in the wall bar.

He raises his glass when he sees Fennec, a smile pulling at his mouth. “Took you long enough!” he calls, and then blinks as he notices Din behind her, smile falling as he realizes it’s just the two of them.

“What happened?”

There’s a growl in his voice and only a shake of Fennec’s head keeps him from getting to his feet. He shoots her a look when she snags the glass out of his hand and knocks it back, but she shrugs and waves a hand at Din.

“His story to tell,” she says, and drops her pack under the table as she takes a seat.

Din sighs and follows suit, cold and wet. Emotions he hasn’t let himself feel since the cruiser's bridge and the Jedi, weighing him down.

Boba Fett is staring at him, slow-burn of anger Din saw in his eyes when he saw Din without Grogu banked for the moment.

“What happened?” he asks again, quieter, an understanding to it Din wishes he didn’t know so well.

He points at the glass Fennec is still holding, kicked back in her seat and watching the room through half-lidded eyes. Standing guard. 

“You have anymore of that?”

Boba snorts, waves a hand at the bartender. “It’ll make you go blind if you drink too much of it, but from the look of you I’d wager you don’t care much about that right now.”

No, Din can’t say that he does.

“Fair enough,” Boba says, and drops a handful of credits into the bartender’s hand when he brings another bottle to the table. “Another of those, if you have it.”

The bartender nods, fingers curling over the credits like he’s afraid someone will steal them from his hand. “As you like,” he says, and hurries back to the bar to get another bottle.

Boba pours him a glass of whatever it is, smells strong enough to strip paint, and pushes it towards Din. Raises his eyebrows at him, but doesn’t say anything.

Din sighs, lifting his helmet enough to take a drink – it tastes as foul as it smells, burns going down – but it smooths over the jagged edges in his chest, dulls the pain. A patch job, and if he’s lucky, it’ll hold long enough to matter.

“The Jedi took him,” he says, and his throat feel scraped raw as the words leave his mouth. He’s surprised he doesn't taste blood, but that might have more to do with the foul brew he’s drinking. “He’s with his kind.”

Fennec sighs, feet of her chair loud against the worn wood of the bar’s floor. “I need some air,” she says, and grabs one of the bottles from the table as she leaves.

Din turns to look at Boba, who looks every bit of his age, and then some.

Boba sighs and refills their glasses, pushing Din’s toward him as he slouches in his chair. Takes a swig of his drink and hisses as it goes down, and then he meets Din’s gaze. Points at him, glass still held in his hand.

“Tell me everything that happened when you idiots boarded that cruiser.”

========

Boba interrupts Din only twice as he talks.

========

“Skywalker.” Boba says, shaking his head when Din offers him the name Cara and Fennec called the Jedi. “ _Of course_ it was Skywalker.”

Like the Jedi’s some kind of annoyance, a pest, rather than – well, whatever that had been on Gideon’s cruiser Din tries not to think about.

========

Boba stares at the Darksaber as Din holds it out for him to see.

And then he laughs.

“Well,” he says, watching Din. “Can’t say I was expecting that.”

Din sighs because he’s beginning to form a better understanding of Boba Fett’s character and the man holds his glass up for a toast Din doesn’t return.

“ _Mand’alor._ ”

========

They go back to Tatooine the next day, Boba Fett’s feet dragging after a long night spent drinking and telling tales. Listening to Din tell his.

Fennec rolls her eyes at the two of them, but even she moves with more caution than Din’s used to seeing from her.

“You’re getting off here for a bit,” Boba says, bringing the _Slave I_ in for a landing just outside Mos Pelgo. “Fennec and I have business to take care of first.”

When Din gives him a look, Boba laughs and claps a hand on his shoulder. “Trust me, it’s not something the Mand’alor should have a part in.”

Din watches them leave, tracks the direction the ship’s headed, and sighs.

“Mando?”

He turns his head to see Cobb staring at him. Not displeased to see him again, just a little confused.

The feeling’s mutual.

========

It isn’t until evening that Din hears the _Slave I_ approaching, and he looks up from the conversation he’s having with one of the Tusken Raiders.

Something about it being laying season for their massifs, and a thank you. Din’s doing most of the translating because Cobb keeps using the wrong signs. 

It’s definitely promising that he’s bothered to learn at all, that others in Mos Pelgo are also learning, but keeps derailing the conversation. The Tusken Raiders laugh at Cobb’s mistakes, and Cobb bristles for show, a smile at the corner of his mouth as they go on to show him the sign he’s looking for.

It’s a far better situation than he expected to come back to find after the situation with the krayt dragon. 

“Looks like your friends are back,” Cobb says, something knowing in his eyes. He saw as well as Din did which way Boba and Fennec headed earlier. “Don’t be a stranger, you hear?”

========

“You did...this,” Din says, feet slowing as he follows Boba and Fennec into what used to be Jabba’s palace.

The last he’d heard Bib Fortuna had taken control of Jabba’s palace, become a crime lord in his own right.

Boba shrugs, sliding a look at Din. “Seemed like it as time to clean things up around here.”

Din has only been here once before. 

It looks far different now, but it may just be that the lights are on now, shadows chased to distant corners.

“Hm,” he says, and nearly fumbles the pack Fennec tosses to him on her way past. “What - “

She turns on her heel, walking backwards with an ease and confidence of someone who knows where the obstacles in this room are by heart. “You plan on sticking around, you’re going to work.”

Boba laughs and shakes his head. “Trust me,” he says, voice lowered to where Fennec can’t overhear. “You don’t want to make her mad.”

========

“Jabba had a rancor,” Boba says, when one of the helpers he hired to help clear up the mess Bib Fortuna’s people left behind stumbles on the trapdoor and nearly falls in. “Your Jedi killed it.”

They’re standing in the pit under Jabba’s throne. Stone and rock and bones and pieces of tattered cloth that no one’s seen fit to remove since the rancor’s death, it seems. Din’s staring at the grate once used to contain the rancor, remembers past instances where had the opportunity to see one in person, and can’t picture one man being able to kill one on his own.

Din’s head turns towards Boba, something like unease settling heavy and cold in his gut. He’s not _my_ Jedi,” he grits out, harsher than he means to.

He still looks for Grogu on waking up, looks for him every moment of his day. Expects to hear his soft cooing, noise of a small child moving around him wherever he his. Has to stop himself from looking over at what he knows will be empty space whenever he comes across something that would have caught Grogu’s interest.

Tries not to think of the lethal grace of the Jedi, confident in his abilities as he fought the Dark Troopers, cut them down as easy as breathing.

Boba stares at him for a long moment, and then laughs.

“Right, sure,” he says, a mocking lilt to his words. “Of course he’s not.”

Din watches him head off to find Fennec, something about getting the trapdoor fixed, Din doesn’t know, mind full of fuzz.

========

“Scavengers,” Boba says. “Pests.”

There’s a group of kids outside the palace, huddling in its shadow. Digging through the trash that’s been tossed from the palace as Boba and the others discarded everything they didn’t want.

“Hm,” Din says, watching Fennec as she snags one by the collar. Lifts him up to eye level and has a conversation with him.

Most of the kids scatter, but a few braver ones hang back, eyeing Fennec warily and casting worried looks at the boy she’s holding.

“Really.”

Boba gives him a look, hardened bounty hunter who’s been on the other side. “Of course,” he says, and strides away to see to some other pressing matter.

========

Boba’s pests and scavengers make a surprising amount of noise for people who aren’t supposed to be inside the palace at all. 

“Shut it,” Boba says, when he sees Din watching Fennec walk by trailing several of the youngest. “Got to start building a criminal empire somewhere.”

========

Others trail in over the next few days, weeks.

Some who worked for Jabba, and then Bib Fortuna. Who wind up working for Boba, in the end. 

Baffled at the kids running around until Boba says something about training them up to run jobs for him. Fennec offering up a cool smile as she leads the few with interest to a shooting range she and Boba had set up.

More of Boba’s scavengers and pests follow him wherever he goes, small shadows.

They’re wearing new clothes and seem to be well-fed. Don’t shy away from Boba or Fennec as much as they used to in the beginning.

Boba pays well, and doesn’t rule through fear like Jabba did, or the way Fortuna did.

Doesn’t need to, with the reputation he has.

=========

“Slaver,” Boba says, shaking Din awake. “Got a shipment of goods coming through. Thought you’d be interested.”

He’s looking towards the door, head lowered, and Din breathes out a breath as he sits up and pulls his helmet on. 

“How many?”

Boba looks up at the sound of Din’s voice filtered through the vocoder, something sharp in his smile as he leads the way, filling Din in as they walk.

They pass several of Boba’s scavengers along the way, small figures huddled in open doorways, wide eyes and fear to them that fuel the anger in Din’s chest.

Fennec’s waiting for them at the ramp of Boba’s ship. There are speeders and desert skiffs loaded up with more of their people.

========

The slavers fight hard, fight dirty. More than one hiding behind frightened faces, sneering at Din and the others as if they think they’ve won something by doing so.

Fennec’s as fine a shot as she’s ever been, and several of the people Boba’s brought on board are above average snipers themselves.

Din doesn't flinch when a shot skims over his shoulder so close he can feel the blistering heat of pass, feeling nothing but grim satisfaction as another slaver falls dead to an impossible shot and moves forward to help their hostage, move them to safety.

He can hear Boba’s yells, the sound of his fighting and dying and stops thinking altogether because there’s work to be done, yet.

========

“We can’t take care of them all here,” Boba says, the two of them watching his scavengers and pest coaxing the newcomers into accepting water, food. “Much as we’d like to, it won’t be safe for long.”

His gaze goes to the Darksaber at Din’s hip, eyebrow raised meaningfully.

========

“Pre-Imperial,” Peli says, a grin on her face as she comes down the ramp of a ship Boba got for him as payment for his help. “Friend of yours said you were having trouble with transponder codes, so I whipped something up for you.”

She doesn’t ask after Grogu, a mercy Din’s grateful for. 

========

Din stops off on Nevarro for fuel, and to touch base with Cara and Greef.

“Well, well, well,” Din hears, and bites back a groan as he turns to come face-to-face with an unfortunately familiar face. “Look who we have here.”

It’s one of the X-wing pilots from Maldo Kreis.

He amused at seeing Din here, leaning against the wall of the marshal’s office while his partner talks to Cara.

“You get your transponder fixed?” the pilot asks, a friendly smile on his face and unadulterated glee in his eyes.

In the way he has an entirely new ship and whatever Peli did to its transponder?

“Yes,” he says, hoping to leave it at that.

Thankfully, his partner wraps up his conversation with Cara and glances their way. Din sees the man’s surprise and flicker of a smile once he recognizes Din, and while it seems as though he’s just as willing to harass Din as his partner is, he waves a datapad in the air.

“We have what we came for, we better head back to base before we get in trouble.”

Still, he gives Din a nod in passing and a cheerful “Nice to see you again, Mando,” as they leave.

When he’s sure they’re gone, Din turns to see Cara looking at him.

She’s _smiling_.

“Friends of yours?”

========

“Huh,” Cara says after Din gives her and Greef the highlights of what he’s been up to lately. “Never would have suspected it.”

There’s a note of approval in her voice, something pleased in her eyes

“Yeah, fine for now,” Greef grumbles, pouting himself another drink. “But if those two think they can take down Tatooine’s slave trade on their own, they're fools to do so.”

Tatooine’s just a point on a star map, plenty of other worlds out there the slavers can take their business elsewhere once they decide Tatooine’s not profitable enough. 

The good news is they won’t do so easily, grown fat and lazy on what they make here. Gives them a chance to break the whole thing down the middle before it jumps planet. The bad news is Boba and Fennec are in for a long fight if they go at it with themselves, the small group of people who will fight with them.

Din shares a look with Cara.

“Yeah?” she says, leaning her elbows on the table between them. “You know anyone who might want to lend them a hand with that?”

The hand holding Greef’s glass pauses halfway to his lips, mouth twisting down as he scowls at them.

“No,” he says gruffly, and knocks back his drink before either of them can say anything else abut it. “Only an idiot would get caught up in that kind of trouble.”

========

Turns out between the two of them Cara and Greef know a lot of idiots.

Bounty hunters for the most part on Greef’s side. Rough around the edges and just liable to stab you in the back than offer you a fair deal, but none of them look kindly on slaving.

“They’ll work for Fett as long as he pays them,” Greef says, fingers drumming on his desk as he avoids meeting anyone’s eyes. “Just tell him to make sure he takes care of any bounties that might be out for him or Shand before they get there.”

Din nods, sure that with some of the people working for him already Boba’s already handled that, but he makes a mental note to comm him when he gets back to his ship.

Cara’s idiots are easier to deal with, according to her. Former shock troopers like her who felt out-of-place once the New Republic turned to peacekeeping duties. Most finding work the way she had, selling their services to whoever paid best and didn’t cross any lines they might have.

Speaking of - 

“Mayfeld’s on Trask,” Cara tells him, crooked smile and a little shrug. “Not that I’m keeping tabs on him or anything.”

========

For a moment, Din thinks Mayfeld’s going to run when he sees him.

Sees the sudden shock he’s used to seeing when a bounty sees him. The way he goes still, frozen in place like prey, and then - 

Mayfeld smiles, lopsided thing, and lets out a _to hell with it_ sigh as he tosses his cards down and pushes the small pile of credits and other galactic currency to the center of the table. 

Din watches as he excuses himself to the other players, glib responses and friendly enough insults before he weaves his way through the room to take the empty seat across from Din.

“Hey, Mando,” he says, unable to hide his nervousness under a thin smile and arm thrown over the back of his chair. “Didn’t think I’d see you around again.”

Certainly not looking for him, Din knows. Not after the last time they saw one another.

“You sleeping alright these days?” 

Not a lot of work to find here on Trask that would lend itself to that kind of thing, not really.

Mayfeld gives him a sharp look, opens his mouth like he’s about to spit out an instinctive answer that of course he is, can’t Mando tell? Just look at him, why he’s the very picture of youth and vitality and medically approved amounts of sleep.

Din tilts his head, and just that small gesture has Mayfeld sighing, long and heavy and tired.

“You got something for me?” he asks, like he trusts Din to ask him for something that won’t get messy on him, cross lines he never expected to.

“Yeah,” Din says, when he can speak again, weight of that kind of trust hitting him where he least expected it to. “I think I do.”

========

Din collides with Paz – or perhaps it’s the other way around – on a bitterly cold planet of rock and ice and snow when his ship has engine trouble. Minor issue, but better to have it looked at now before it becomes worse, and then Paz is there.

A punch to his head in greeting and low growl of _”You,”_ that scatters passersby like birds, panicked calls and hasty escape and Paz’s helmet looming over him, hands at Din’s throat.

Din wheezes, breath knocked from his lungs in the fray, head ringing and has the dim realization he could be in trouble if Paz is truly angry with him, but - 

Paz is laughing, body shaking with it as he climbs off Din and offers him a hand up.

One that Din eyes warily as Paz makes an impatient gesture at him to take it when he hesitates too long, and, “Get up, idiot,” he says, something mocking to it, familiar. “The ground is no place for the Mand’alor to be.”

Ah, yes. 

That.

========

Paz isn’t alone.

There are others from their covert with him, who thankfully don’t see fit to greet him in the same manner as Paz.

“What - “Din starts to ask, accepting a cup of kaf from one of the others and uses it to warm his hands before taking a drink. “What are you doing here?”

Paz shrugs, hisses quietly as it pulls at a bruise from a hit Din landed before he recognized Paz. “The Armorer is sending us to Tatooine.” There’s a smirk in his voice, something vicious. “Said she’d gotten a request for aide from another Mandalorian. Said foundlings were involved.”

Din’s still trying to wrap his mind around the fact that Boba Fett somehow knows the Armorer, well enough to ask her for whatever help she can offer.

He takes a sip of his own cup of caf, gaze dropping to Din’s hip where the Darksaber is clipped to his belt. 

“Mentioned a few other things too.”

========

Din finds Ahsoka still on Corvus, helping the new governor put things to right.

Her eyebrows go up when she sees the Darksaber, and Din echoes her sigh when he tells her how it came to be in his possession.

The forest is no longer on fire, no smoldering embers to be found but the scent of smoke still lingers, the air hazy and dark.

They can hear voices in the distance, bright, lively as the people of this planet work hard to rebuild, rise from the literal ashes.

“I could train you,” she says, and laughs, this quiet, sad sound. “But I don’t think that’s why you’re here. I don’t think I’m the one you’re looking for.”

Din wants to protest, tell her she’s wrong, but the words don’t come.

Ahsoka gives him a small smile. “Your son isn't here, Mandalorian.”

=========

There’s a message waiting for Din when he gets back to his ship after talking to Ahsoka.

Boba looks tired, but satisfied. 

In the background, Din thinks he can hear young voices, laughter.

He gives Din a set of coordinates, and tells him they didn’t come cheap, almost as an afterthought.

========

Yavin 4 is hot, humid, and Din sighs as he takes in readings from his ship’s sensors and what his helmet is telling him.

Temperate to tropical climate with rain forests and jungles. Several continental masses and several landmarks of note, one of which is a large stone structure he can see through the cockpit window.

Old, ancient, and its been repurposed in recent years, most notably the landing pad on one side.

He’s not sure what to make of it. 

What was clearly an important site to whoever built made to fit the needs of whoever came after. As he explores the area, he sees a familiar emblem bright and bold emblazoned on the side of cargo containers and equipment. Things the Rebel Alliance left behind when the war moved elsewhere.

Din gives himself a shake and powers his ship down, hesitating before he slips the beskar staff in its place on his back as there’s no knowing what kind of local wildlife he might encounter. 

He locks his ship up once he’s outside, doesn’t want to risk anything getting inside, and heads towards the small settlement sensors detected earlier.

The Jedi’s X-wing is parked at the back of the hangar. To Din’s surprise, there’s an A-wing beside it.

There are several larger ships, light freighters and cargo transports as he passes the open doors to the hangar at the base of the structure. Landspeeders and a pair of speeder bikes in varying states of repair. Other projects or vehicles under tarps off to one side of the landing pad.

It’s not what he was expecting to find, something as normal as this.

Halfway to the settlement Din feels eyes on him, the sensation of being watched. Raises a hand to his helmet and flips through the settings until _there_.

Small figure crouched in the jungle keeping pace with him in the low-lying greenery lining the path, body-heat signature within human range.

Din snorts, feels his lips start to curve into a smile, and then - 

“Morning, Mandalorian,” someone says, friendly enough for the steel backing it up. 

He turns his head to see a woman standing in at the point where the path opens up into the settlement proper. 

She’s smiling, but it doesn’t reach her eyes, and she’s holding a blaster rifle on him.

Din stops, hands held away from his body as he waits to see what she’s going to do next.

She cocks her head, as though expecting a response, and baffled, Din offers one. 

“Morning,” he says, only just avoiding making it a question.

The woman watches him a moment longer, and snorts, lowering her blaster rifle so it’s no longer aimed at Din. 

“You seem a little lost,” she says, and indicates the settlement with a tip of her head. “We don’t get many visitors in these parts.”

Given the emphasis Boba had put on the difficulty of getting his hands on the coordinates for this place, Din believes it.

“I’m looking for someone,” he says, wondering if it was the wrong thing to say when the woman’s jaw squares, hands on the blaster rifle flexing. “I left my son in his care.”

There’s a shocked gasp from Din’s left, and rustle of greenery as his small stalker runs to the woman. There’s a marked resemblance, Din notices, and the way she moves to keep the boy behind her is telling.

“Is that Grogu’s dad?” Din hears, the boy leaning around the woman – his mother? - to stare at Din. “He’s not what I expected. Too tall.”

Din feels like he should be insulted. Maybe that shows, just a little, or the woman’s seen something else to make her think Din isn’t a threat as she points the blaster rifle at the ground, laughing as she ruffles the boy’s hair.

“Go find Luke,” she says, giving him a gentle nudge. “Tell him he has a guest.”

The boy makes a face – caught between goggling at Din or fetching whoever this ‘Luke’ is, but a look from the woman has him running off. Not towards the settlement as Din would have expected, but along another path that leads into the jungle.

“Jedi,” the woman says with a shrug as she walks up to him. “Odd people.”

========

Shara gives Din a brief tour of the settlement, ending with the fully kitted-out medical facility.

“Trust me when I say it gets far too much use for a place like this, but it seems fitting you’d want to know about it.”

Din has no idea what that means or even what he’s expected to say in response, so the sound of the boy – Poe – returning is a relief. 

They go back outside to see what has Poe so excited, and Shara laughs. The boy is pulling a man who must be his father along, chattering to him about something that has him smiling helplessly.

Trailing behind them is a figure in dark clothes, lightsaber clipped to his belt and carrying Grogu in his arms.

“Mandalorian,” Shara says with a smile, and goes to join her family, leaving Din staring at the Jedi and his son.

Grogu squeaks when he spots Din, ears perking up from the sleepy droop, and he wriggles furiously until the Jedi sets him down on the ground with a laugh, fond smile on his face as Grogu runs to Din.

He doesn’t collide with Din’s leg only due to Din scooping him up before he can, holding his son to him tightly as his heart squeezes in his chest.

Grogu’s chattering at him, smiling in pure happiness and small hands patting the cheeks of Din’s helmet.

========

“I had Artoo send my commlink code once I realized I’d forgotten to give it to you myself,” the Jedi is saying, but Din is only half listening, attention more for Grogu at the moment. “I guess you never got it.”

Grogu pats Din’s hand when he fails to respond and he looks up to see the Jedi smiling at him.

“What?”

The Jedi gestures to the astromech unit in the corner of the garden? Courtyard? Din’s not sure what to call it, but there are small ponds with fish and frogs and a fountain.

Calming, soothing.

The droid erupts in a string of whistles and beeps and warbles, and sounds angry. Irritated at the least.

A look to the Jedi shows he’s not upset by the ongoing tirade from his droid, seems, of all things, amused by it. 

“No, no,” the Jedi says. “You’re right, Artoo, it was my fault, I apologize for insinuating you were to blame for any of it.”

The droid makes a suspicious noise, as if it doesn’t trust the sincerity of the Jedi’s words, but at another quiet apology from him and droid settles down.

“I’m sorry to you, too,” the Jedi says, giving Din a sheepish smile. “I was distracted at the time, but it’s not an excuse.”

Din hums, thinking he should be angry with the Jedi for such a simple mistake, but then again he didn’t offer his commlink code either. 

Didn’t think he could, at the time with what Ahsoka had told him, but this Jedi - 

“I thought attachments were frowned upon,” he says, can’t help but ask. Worried the Jedi will insist he leave, stay away this time. Wants – needs – to know. “That Jedi didn’t allow them.”

The Jedi sighs. 

“The old Jedi Order didn’t, no,” he says, something to the look in his eyes that says there’s so much more to it. He laughs, and it’s. Tired, Sad. “The old Jedi Order died years ago. I’d like to think there’s a lot we – I – could learn from their mistakes.”

He looks at Grogu, stalking a frog and giggling to himself, eyes flicking up to meet Din’s through the visor of his helmet.

“You’re his father,” he says, and there’s something sad about that too. “I would never want to keep him from you, or you from him.”

========

“Oh,” The Jedi says when Din holds the hilt of the Darksaber out to him. “Hm.”

Not the most promising reaction, really.

“I was hoping you might train me.”

The Jedi looks at him.

Din sighs and tells him why.

========

“I see,” the Jedi says, doing a truly abominable job of not laughing at Din’s predicament.

Grogu doesn’t bother, soft raspy giggles and wide toothy grin and Din rolls his eyes at the display.

“Yes,” the Jedi says a moment later, soft smile and quiet chuckle he can’t seem to help. “I’ll train you.”

========

The Jedi is gone, off to close up the hangar for the night and using that chore as an excuse to let the two of them have time to themselves. Or, really, let Din have some time to think.

Grogu’s sleeping in his arms, soft quiet snores and incomprehensible burbling as he dreams.

Lights from the settlement set out a soft, golden glow through the trees, the sound of voices carried on the wind back to the garden or courtyard or whatever this place is.

The Darksaber is still a heavy weight at his hip, duties and responsibilities he wants nothing to do with and can’t see giving to anyone else, and yet?

Din feels like he can breathe again under the stars of a system far from whatever home he had left to claim. From the one he hopes to claim for himself and his people, their future.


End file.
